Wood ducks are colorful characters

Friday

May 29, 2009 at 12:01 AMMay 29, 2009 at 8:51 PM

The wood duck is as unusual as it is interesting to look at. Unlike mallards, which nest in grass just upland from wetlands, wood ducks are cavity nesters that prefer the hollow of a tree to set up housekeeping. And they seem to have adapted to living in town, particularly in Washington Park in the heart of Springfield.

Chris Young

They look as if a wood carver with an unexpired creative license created them in a fit of imagination.

The male’s green crest sweeps back over its head like an emerald green helmet with white piping. The eyes are brilliant red, as if that was the only color left in the carver’s paint box.

The female wears white spectacles that fit more like racing goggles. Together, male and female wood ducks are striking and hard to miss.

And they’re homegrown, not just migrants passing through central Illinois on the way to more verdant forests elsewhere.

The wood duck is as unusual as it is interesting to look at.

Unlike mallards, which nest in grass just upland from wetlands, wood ducks are cavity nesters that prefer the hollow of a tree to set up housekeeping.

And they seem to have adapted to living in town, particularly in Washington Park in the heart of Springfield.

A few years ago, it was unusual to see a wood duck in the park. Now there are several pairs with up to six broods paddling around the lagoon.

Mike Ward, an ornithologist with the Illinois Natural History Survey in Champaign, says he gets calls all the time about wood ducks flying through back yards.

“I think that they are like other birds that are kind of getting used to living in town,” he says. “It helps that a lot of our wetlands are cleaner these days thanks to the Clean Water Act.”

Ward says some birds have learned to make a pretty good living in urban areas. The wood duck, however, seems to be at home in town or in the country.

“It’s not like the Cooper’s hawk that seems to be moving almost exclusively into town,” Ward says. “You see them increasing in urban areas as well as natural areas.”

H. David Bohlen, assistant curator of zoology at the Illinois State Museum, says wood ducks moved in about a decade ago.

Now they sometimes even spend the winter, huddling under the bridge crossing the lagoon when it gets really cold — forgoing their winter trip to the southern United States.

Then they started nesting.

“They usually like sycamore trees, and there are a few sycamores in the park with natural cavities,” Bohlen says.

Bohlen has been studying the urbanization of Sangamon County and its effects on bird numbers and species diversity for years.

Watching birds adapt to human environments sometimes leaves him shaking his head in amazement.

“You see them coming from a long way off,” he says of the wood ducks in Washington Park. “You will see the mother trying to get the brood past all the dogs and other things in the park.

“I saw two girls following them and taking pictures (Tuesday).”

All that contact has made them more tolerant of people. Still, the environment seems to be agreeing with them.

“I’ve seen half a dozen broods,” Bohlen says. “There are a lot of them out there. They just keep having them.”

That’s a far cry from the 1930s, when wood ducks were in serous jeopardy. Before hunting regulations were developed in the early 1900s, resident ducks such as wood ducks were fair game all year long.

The late Frank Bellrose of the Illinois Natural History Survey in Havana, along with colleague Art Hawkins, helped perfect the wood duck nesting box to replace natural cavities that are lost when dead trees are removed. Bellrose later authored the definitive book on the subject, “Ecology and Management of the Wood Duck.”

Now the nest boxes are common and the wood duck is a conservation success story — one that can be witnessed in the heart of Washington Park.